[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ].I.Title.PS3610.O355B43 2010813’.6—dc222009043811http://us.penguingroup.comACKNOWLEDGMENTSI really have the coolest job in the world.and the best readers.You have all been very kind in taking the time to contact me and let me know what you liked, and even what you didn’t like, about my stories.(Yes, I include the didn’t-like stuff, because it can still be helpful in shaping my future works, particularly when phrased politely and thoughtfully.) So thank you very, very much.Also, I’d like to extend a thank-you to all the editors and compilers of folklore, legends, and fairy tales everywhere, and to the many, many tellers of those tales over the centuries.I’m proud to be part of this long-standing tradition of entertaining people, and I’ll do my best to keep it up.~JeanThe Frog PrinceAuthor’s Note: Welcome, and I hope you’ll enjoy my versions of erotically revised fairy tales.Revising them erotically isn’t as strange as it might seem, either; I’ll bet you didn’t know that in the oldest German version of this story, the princess didn’t own a golden ball so much as she owned a golden ballus.which was a local corruption of the Latin word phallus.Puts a whole new twist on this classic tale, doesn’t it? In an effort to preserve the true spirit and meaning of this classic fairy tale, I feel it should be told in a way that honors that original, adult intent.PRINCE Henrik was a frog.It wasn’t his idea, but he was one.There were worse things he could have been enchanted into, of course.The flies he ate, for one; it was bad enough how the wings tickled on the way down into his gullet, but to actually be a fly would have been horrible.A disturbingly short life span and an unnatural attraction to animal droppings were not at all on his list of must-have experiences.Still, there was the mud between one’s toes; that wasn’t as bad as it could have been.At least, not on a warm summer’s day like today.It was soft and squelchy, and satisfying in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a lad.The only problem was, he wasn’t a lad, and feeling like a lad was what had gotten him into this predicament.Prince Henrik was doomed to remain a frog, unless he either married the Fairy Tilda—who was more than twice his age, and Henrik just couldn’t bring himself to marry a woman who had been born before even his own mother—or found a young woman willing to fulfill the fairy’s codicils.I shouldn’t have said to her face that I didn’t need a ��second mother.” That wasn’t well done of me.Nor did it help when my father’s chief counselor pointed out she was surely in the last gasp of her childbearing years and thus unlikely to bear a suitable heir.and I definitely should not have agreed, let alone concurred so wholeheartedly.I also should have paid more attention to my geography lessons as a lad.Part of the Fairy Tilda’s curse had been to translocate Henrik to a foreign land.Instead of the birch trees he was familiar with, this forest boasted a plethora of broad-trunked oaks.The only tolerable things about it were the mild weather and the large, tasty flies.One full month of life as a frog had taught him the different flavors of a variety of insects from spiders to gnats, and the fat, fuzzy, flies were the best.Except they tickled when they went down.Tasty, but disturbing at the same time.If ever a frog could pray to the ears of the angels in Heaven, Henrik certainly tried.Every single meal, he offered up a prayer for deliverance.Every single mouthful, he worried he would never again be a man.A strange, beautiful sound tickled his ears, or what passed for them.For a moment, the transformed prince wondered if he was hearing angels laughing.It was coming from the far bank of the river he had been deposited by, the river which was his temporary home.The near bank had a gentle slope to it, green and mossy, with the occasional thicket of bracken ferns
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